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Here is another of my Imperial Assault figures.
IG-88. I followed the Sorastro guide, which involved drybrushing, washes, drybrushing, etc. 4 or 5 cycles.
Then painting on some forced highlights, then a blue wash on one side and a red one on the other.
This was fast, and a little sloppy. But fast.
C&C Welcome.

So my husband is running a game this Saturday and he asked "Do you have any robot figures?" and I said "Ummm, let me get back to you."

Happily, I had on hand a copy of Patrick Keith's 50246, "Marie She-Bot" familiar to film aficionados from Fritz Lang's seminal "Metropolis". I also had a handful of little robots from Johnny Lauck's Salvage Crew.

So I glued them together and primed them and painted them very simply with metallic paints. The whole thing took less than an hour.

For metallics I use the principles I learned for gilding: Everything has a color underneath it, usually a rust-red for gold and a black or grey for silver (or aluminum or palladium -- I never could bring myself to gild with something that could decay as fast as silver leaf).

I originally planned to paint the Metropolis robot gold, so I primed her with Red Iron Oxide.

Then I did the same with a little monkey-robot from Johnny Lauck (ignore the two little guys to the right; I didn't get further than this with them and I plan to paint them like plastic anyway, if I get to them before Saturday).

Then my husband pointed out that if I painted the Metropolis robot silver she could stand in for a Moonsilver Alchemical later on. D'oh!

... Okay, so now I was going to see what silver paint looks like over brick red. For science!

I washed over the two red robots with dark paint to bring out the details: Burnt Umber on the little monkeybot, as is normal for under a warm color like gold. But then I used straight Carbon Black on Maria She-Bot since she was going to be cold silver, and black generally looks cold under other colors. I notice that she looks just like the Chinese lacquer sculptures I've seen around, a point worth remembering to try some other time, perhaps.

I also painted black primer on the servo on the left, another Johnny Lauck 'bot. I had to glue that one to a fender washer as it had a tendency to topple over to its left; otherwise its base had been the same size as the other Lauck robots. That's also why it appears now; its glue was setting while I was priming the others. (Once again, ignore the two on the right.)

I then took my good #2 Winsor and Newton series 7 brush and drybrushed silver metallic paint onto the armed servo Lauck 'bot and Marie, She-Bot.

... I find using good brushes helps give a lot of control and evenness, even for this. This wasn't the really scrabbly kind of drybrushing anyway, more like stroking tiny amounts of unthinned paint over the high points of a countoured surface.

Anyhow, you can see the different color effects based on what went under the silver paint, black on the left and brick red on the right. You can also see the detail level difference between Johnny Lauck's sculpt and Patrick Keith's.

Then I did the same thing, only using gold metallic paint, to the Johnny Lauck monkey robot.

I painted their bases solid black. Normally I like a base with at least a neutral grey with shadows, but I was in a hurry and the black contrasted better with their metallic shininess.

I also added a few details, red eyes on the Lauck robots and a glowing yellow inside the armed Lauck bot's gun barrel (Which I see I didn't take pictures of. Need to fix that for the Show Off thread).

And there you have it. Really really fast quick and dirty robot painting. Total painting time: About forty minutes. (With prep time, work time is probably an hour, or a smidgen more)

Decided to do a quickie for the Marie She-bot from Metropolis. Went with the burnished metal look and a quick sculpted base to resemble concrete. The eyes didn't come out as piercing as I wanted, so might have to quickly revisit that